


About A Boy

by Crollalanza



Series: The Guess Monster Collection [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Getting Together, Loss, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-04 03:29:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16338977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crollalanza/pseuds/Crollalanza
Summary: Satori feels like the interloper at Shiratorizawa, only there at Washijou-sama's request, but he can wait for his chance and sure ain't bothered about making friends. Then he meets Semi Eita, and the breath leaves his body.





	About A Boy

**Author's Note:**

> This has been written for Tendou Rarepair week. The prompt was 'Firsts'.

Transferring to Shiratorizawa for his High School years, and moving in as a boarder, Tendou Satori had known Life was about to change for the better. When he’d got his acceptance letter, he saw the vistas opening up before him. The chances to play, which he’d been denied before, would increase under Washijou-san’s patronage and he’d find a place—a team—in which to fit.

He hadn’t realised how _much_ better until the first day he wandered into the gym and had seen his new teammates.

Of course he knew about Ushijima, he’d even spoken to the guy once (or rather yelled out a ‘hi’ and been treated to a rather startled ‘Do I know you?’ back). Ushijima, unlike the rest of the first years, made the senior team the day their senior years began, while Tendou—a newcomer—was on the outskirts of the first years, being eyed with suspicion and even dislike from kids he divined as other middle blockers.  

“So…” he began. “How many of you guys are new to the school?”

No one replied straight away. It was possible that some hadn’t heard him, others stared at their feet or determinedly in the other direction, so he clicked his tongue.  “Wow, my powers of invisibility have finally taken hold,” he breathed, widening his eyes and pulling his most goofy expression.

One person laughed, or rather snorted, and turned to face Satori.

(He’d say years later that the breath had punched out of him on seeing such cheekbones, but at the time it was more that someone was actually talking to him without malice.)

“I’ve been here since Junior High,” came the reply, along with a small bow. “Semi Eita. I play—”

“Setter, right?” Satori remembered.

“You’ve done your homework.”

“Wouldn’t you?” Satori asked.

“Know your enemy?” Semi murmured.

“Hey, I’m clearly the interloper here.”

Then Soekawa had slid across to them, resting his elbow on Semi’s shoulder to remind him they were going off site after practise. A move so proprietary and excluding that Satori had already taken a step back before Semi had dropped a hand on his arm. “It’s a first day tradition to go out of the grounds after practise and buy pork buns. Of course, now that we’re actually allowed off site, then Wakatoshi might join us.”

_Us? Is he including me?_

Satori thinks that was the day he first fell in love. Or at least developed a crush on a boy.

And a boy so beautiful, the long lashes which adorned his slanting, acutely angled eyes were really the least attractive thing about him.

 

They were in Semi’s room when Satori kissed him for the first time. It was more of a smudge of lips against a temple, and could easily have been passed off as an accident, for Satori wasn’t at all sure Semi had even noticed. He was upset, holding back tears and frustration because it was clear to him now after Golden Week that he belonged on the periphery, and Satori had tried to find the words to reassure him, but none had come out, nothing except some kind of crass joke about the kid’s dumb hairstyle as he huddled next to Semi on his bed.

“You can talk,” Semi mumbled.

“Hey, mine’s airborne. And cool. Shirabu looks like someone hacked at his fringe with blunt hedge trimmers.”

It was as Semi began to laugh, his shoulders shaking and his breath warm on Satori’s chest, the offending kiss, or rather lips brushing a forehead, had occurred.

An eon passed. Semi said nothing, but his laugh had hitched into some sort of gasp and then he turned his face up…

He blinked. Slowly. The lashes shuttered the deep brown eyes rendering them unreadable, but a faint flush appeared across the bridge of his nose.

“Satori…”

“S-sorry. I’ll go.”

His fingers curled around Satori’s shirt, “No … stay.”

 

His first confession was to Eita, although by the time he presented the letter written on a page from his maths book, it was a moot point.  Nuzzling his ear, Satori eased his arm out from under Eita, and planted his feet on the floor.

“That time already,” Eita yawned.

“Go back to sleep,” Satori whispered and reached for his clothes. It was as he was putting on his pyjama shorts, that he remembered the letter, now scrunched up in his dressing gown pocket. He smoothed out the creases, then refolded into precise lines.

“Incoming!” he called softly, and fired the paper plane across the room, watching with a chuckle as it hit Eita on the nose.

“Huh!”

“See ya at breakfast, beautiful. I’ll be the one with the heavy bags under my eyes that make me look even cooler.”

“I’ll be the one with a plate full of food, while you pick at some fruit and moan that you only want ice-cream,” Eita replied. “And stop calling me ‘beautiful.’”  He rubbed his eyes, and picked up the letter, scowling as he unfolded it.

The scowl disappeared, replaced with an almost dewy smile and followed by a melodramatic sniff.

“You like me, Tendou-san?” he said, hand over his heart. “I never knew.”

“The squared paper makes it more official.”

“I’m not holding hands over the dinner table.”

“I’ll settle for playing footsie under it.”

“We already do that.” Chewing his lips, Eita glanced again at the letter. “Same, by the way.”

With a flourishing bow, partly to cover his beetroot infused face, Satori snuck out the door, but before he returned to his room, he poked his head back. “I await your reply, SemiSemi.”

“You’ll wait a long time if you call me that again, Guess Monster.”

 

The heartbreak hadn’t occurred at graduation. Back then, before the cherry blossom had begun to drift, they’d been full of promises to keep in touch, to visit often, to message continually and Skype every night.

Maybe it had, though. Perhaps the emerging buds waiting for the sun to warm so they could bloom were the start of the end.

This, Tendou tells himself, is not his first heartbreak. He isn’t going to curl up in a heap and cry like he had when he’d been a kid and they’d refused to let him play.

But then, if he does cry, then maybe he can get through this fug and work out where the hell to go from here.

Not his first heartbreak. Yet however mutually they’d agreed on this, it still hurts harder and sharper than any knife.

In a drawer, tucked inside an old copy of Volleyball Monthly, there’s a letter written on a page torn from an exercise book, with lines not squares.

_‘Tendou-san,_

_I confess my undying fondness, gratitude and support and pledge you bowls of chocolate ice-cream forever and a day._

_Your partner in snark, SemiSemi xxx’_

And maybe the thing to do is to burn this, but he folds it back inside the magazine, sandwiching the confession between the picture of two opposing captains and goes out to breathe life into his lungs. It’s cold outside, and there’s frost patterning the paving stones, but still he trundles towards his favourite café, ready to spurn the pork buns.

He’s lost his first love, a potent and beautiful boy, who had left him gasping, and right now he's not sure he'll ever recover.

But he has the memories and the years they shared.

And there’s always ice-cream.

 


End file.
